Hi Joan,
It is getting close to a year since I was fortunate enough to be admitted to your recovery center and I thought I would let you know what has transpired in my life since I left.
When I got home it didn’t take long to get back into the swing of work and I found that I really enjoyed the local AA meeting. It was difficult to attend because the meeting was not until 7:30 and I got off at 5:00 but since I lived out of town that meant that I had to kill a couple of hours but I managed to hit about two to three meeting a week. Things went pretty good for about four and a half months and I was feeling really good. Since I had not experienced sobriety since I was sixteen this feeling of peace was a new experience. Then in March I had to go to court, remember I am the idiot that rolled his car on the way to rehab. Well that was the beginning of my hell on earth. The courts had originally charged me with a DUI but after a month they finally sent my blood work to the lab and when they got the results they changed the charge to driving with a blood alcohol above .08 then five days before trial they re-added the DUI charge and charged me with two charges for the same offence. If I had realized this before the trial started I would never have gone to trial. Well the jury found me not guilty of driving over the legal limit of .08 but they did find my guilty of a DUI (don’t ever get in trouble in carbon county Wyoming). This was not my first offence in my lifetime but it had been so long since my last one that it was legally a first offence. The judge threw the proverbial book at me. She gave me six months in jail and a years’ supervised probation with two thousand dollars in fines. She suspended four months which left me with 60 days that she started immediately. They took me directly to jail do not pass go. After twenty-two days a lawyer friend of mine (not the one that represented me) got them to allow me to use the time that I had spent with you towards my sentence and got me out. Since I had used most of my vacation for rehab I needed nine days leave without pay at work. After eighteen years of service to the university of Wyoming they would not grant me the leave. After two weeks of waiting to see what their decision would be about my job (keep in mind that I quite school at age sixteen and set my sites on this particular job) they threw me a bone and decided to demote me and cut my wages by twenty thousand a year. As a result of the wage loss I had no choice but to declare bankruptcy and lose everything I own including the house that I built with my own two hands.
I am not telling you this to whine but to let you know what I have been through in the last ten months so you and your staff will understand when I say. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I owe all of you more than words can express. I have been sober for almost eleven month and there is no way that I could have gone through all of this if it were not for all of you. I think of my time at MBR often and wish that I could come visit you all for my first birthday but that is not in the cards right now but some day I do hope to come visit and say thanks in person. Please share this with anyone who might remember me and let them know that on August 12th I regained custody of my youngest daughter.
Forever grateful.
Garth G., Wyoming
